We recently had a client that hired a temporary employee through a temp service and a week later we were asked to disable her account . . . the reason being . . . the temp had no experience with Excel, Word or any type of email, she stated that she didn't even have a personal email account.

I'm just wondering what everyone else's experience has been . . better or worse.

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This must be like 25% of the US "workforce." Even my "has a physics degree with high marks" twenty something roommate who grew up in the tech era only barely has a working computer or email address. She has them, but she checks email once a month or less. It's a technicality only. And her laptop is just a big music player. She IS quite good at Excel because she does data entry as a job. But outside of using Excel at her job, she and pretty much half of her friends have essentially no use for computers or technology and if she didn't have a job in data entry or still have a laptop from her time in college it is unlikely that she would have any of those skills either - even as a science grad!

My guess is that your temp is a millenial. Those of us over 30 take computer literacy for granted. We grew up in eras of having to learn how to use computers and computer knowledge being cool and being smart was cool. Whether you are 30 or 70 today, you probably got a lot of computer training and wanted to use computers.

If you are under 30, you are in a group where it was and remains "cool" to not understand computers and using technology is often avoided. A dramatic backsliding in basic literacy skills. Ten year olds got more programming when I was a kid in the 1980s in schools with almost no computers than kids today do by the time that they get out of college. It's a different world (in the US) of dramatically missing computers skills. Of course those that choose to learn about computers today have unlimited resources for it, but they have to be self motivated.

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I'm not claiming to know stats of millennials and computer use, I do know that millennials have a very high knowledge of smartphone social media apps, YouTube, etc. They are also very knowledgeable with gaming consoles. However, at least some of them which are into PC gaming have some basic knowledge of computer hardware and networking.

I'm not claiming to know stats of millennials and computer use, I do know that millennials have a very high knowledge of smartphone social media apps, YouTube, etc. They are also very knowledgeable with gaming consoles. However, at least some of them which are into PC gaming have some basic knowledge of computer hardware and networking.

LOL. Compared to twenty years ago when twenty year olds had all written code and know what binary was and what a file was.

I've got to agree with Scott here. When I was going through High School I was able to take QBasic, VBasic, and Pascal as foreign language courses as opposed to taking French or Spanish. Today that isn't even an option for High Schoolers at my old High School. Because I go a taste of programming at that age after High School I taught myself COBOL, Fortron 77, C, C++, and Java. Luckily my 8 year old son is interested in technology as much as I am. I'm sure I have some influence on that.

Well... Since we are picking on Millennials, I've got to throw this out there. ;)

We hired an administrative assistant that didn't know anything about computers. She was in her 40's. When I say, didn't know anything, I mean, no knowledge or Microsoft Office, no knowledge of Windows Operating Systems and might I add, a royal pain to support. We sent her to a tech college to take some Continuing Education classes for Office and Windows OS, which minimally helped. Helping her figure out basic tasks was an every day occurrence. Don't get me wrong, she is a very sweet lady and very professional but doesn't know anything that would help her in her position.

So you may ask why we kept her. She was mad in the file room. She kept it very organized and was able to pull files, add files, replace files without ever losing it's organization features. In fact, we hired another admin assistant just to do the computer work and let her have her way with the file room.

My Point being, it's not a generational thing. Some people are epic fails when it comes to computers. Which is okay, find another position for that individual that fits their set skills and everyone is happy.

Record I've had for been told to disable a user account was three days after they started, but they thought the job would be easier than it was so quit.

As for user computer skill relating to age, I've seen it all over the place. People have this odd idea that younger generations grew up with this tech, so must be better at using it. I've found they know how to do what they want, but if something goes wrong or it's something new, they tend to panic; though apparently I fall into the millennial bracket and I take them apart for fun.

On the other hand, I know older people who are too scared of this unknown machine they have to do much with and one fright and it's never turned on again. Also one guy who is in his 70's and loves his computer, tinkers with it all the time and rarely had any problems. I do a bit of tutoring at my local community centre as a volunteer and I've met a few people there who hadn't touched anything past a typewriter. They could time easy, happy as could be with that, but never got on with the mouse.

I personally think it's interest, the people who are alright with computers are those with some sort of interest in them. The ones with no interest tend to be the worst, regardless of age or anything else. It's like anything, you can teach people how to use them, but if there's no real interest then they don't really learn much, just how to do what they need to do.

I'm not sure our kid has even opened up her laptop since getting out of school. It seems that anything she 'wants' to do can be done on a phone or ipad. IMHO, pervasive access to mobile devices and purpose built apps has reduced the realm of general home computing to the level of using a toaster.

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There have been a few employees in which computer literacy was null. In-fact I have trained a couple of people on how to use a computer mouse. These are generally older therapists who have until recently, documented everything with paper and pen. The company I work for is continually looking for efficient ways of reducing paper use. My advise in handling people who are very green with computer use is to have PATIENCE and find creative analogies for explaining how things work. Patience, practice, and clear communication (limited jargon) is the key to effective learning for these individuals and keeping strong relationships with co-workers is a sure fire way to promote your own job security and workplace happiness.

When I was going through High School I was able to take QBasic, VBasic, and Pascal as foreign language courses as opposed to taking French or Spanish. Today that isn't even an option for High Schoolers at my old High School.

That's kind of awesome. Do you mind if I ask when this was? Last I heard, my old high school was considering doing something similar, but the discussion came years too late to benefit me. (Silver lining: I can ask for tech support en español, so I guess foreign language wasn't a total bust...)

As someone who used to ensure staff were pc literate in a staff of 700 with a fair percent ageing, I have only had a handful of millennials be identified as required computer literacy skills or identified themselves as not being fulfill their role due to lack of IT knowledge in their training package, however, In Australia, computer skills are taught at school and even to the point now (beginning this year) programming is coming back to the table.

Scott Alan Miller wrote:

My guess is that your temp is a millenial. Those of us over 30 take computer literacy for granted. We grew up in eras of having to learn how to use computers and computer knowledge being cool and being smart was cool. Whether you are 30 or 70 today, you probably got a lot of computer training and wanted to use computers.

If you are under 30, you are in a group where it was and remains "cool" to not understand computers and using technology is often avoided. A dramatic backsliding in basic literacy skills. Ten year olds got more programming when I was a kid in the 1980s in schools with almost no computers than kids today do by the time that they get out of college. It's a different world (in the US) of dramatically missing computers skills. Of course those that choose to learn about computers today have unlimited resources for it, but they have to be self motivated.

I think it is due to the fact that end user tech- smartphones used for texting and social media, game consoles that have web browsers and netflix apps etc cover a lot of what most people want to do. This tech does not cross over to an office environment in the same way home tech did in the 80s and 90s.

As someone who used to ensure staff were pc literate in a staff of 700 with a fair percent ageing, I have only had a handful of millennials be identified as required computer literacy skills or identified themselves as not being fulfill their role due to lack of IT knowledge in their training package, however, In Australia, computer skills are taught at school and even to the point now (beginning this year) programming is coming back to the table.

Scott Alan Miller wrote:

My guess is that your temp is a millenial. Those of us over 30 take computer literacy for granted. We grew up in eras of having to learn how to use computers and computer knowledge being cool and being smart was cool. Whether you are 30 or 70 today, you probably got a lot of computer training and wanted to use computers.

If you are under 30, you are in a group where it was and remains "cool" to not understand computers and using technology is often avoided. A dramatic backsliding in basic literacy skills. Ten year olds got more programming when I was a kid in the 1980s in schools with almost no computers than kids today do by the time that they get out of college. It's a different world (in the US) of dramatically missing computers skills. Of course those that choose to learn about computers today have unlimited resources for it, but they have to be self motivated.

+1 for Australian millenial computer literacy.

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